


Pilot

by leiascully



Series: The FBI's Most Unwanted [1]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode Related, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2015-04-26
Packaged: 2018-03-25 22:04:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3826624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On day one, there was the dark and the light.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pilot

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: First in a series attempting to cover every episode Seasons 1-7.  
> Timeline: Pilot  
> Disclaimer: _The X-Files_ and all related characters are the property of Chris Carter, 1013 Productions, and Fox Studios. No profit is made from this and no infringement is intended.

Scully on day one: steady on her heels, armored in her bad suit, armed with her files. The lines of her clothing hid the lines of her body, and her makeup was camouflage-neutral. Dana Scully, under the radar, non-threatening to the boys' club, except for the the brightness of her eyes that hid nothing. 

She had heard all about him. She had reserved the privilege of judgment for herself. He saw it in her face; she held up the Mulder of legend and the Mulder in front of her like x-rays in front of a light box, checking for discrepancies. He appreciated that about her. She didn't examine him like a curiosity from a cabinet, precious for its rarity rather than its utility, cracked and dusty but one of a kind. She smiled at him. Her handshake was firm and cool, the architecture of her bones palpable through her fine skin. Mulder felt less otherworldly at her touch, as if he had never belonged to this planet from the moment his sister was taken until the moment he met Scully and found his people. His person. 

She stood her ground in the middle of his office, his shrine to the inexplicable universe. Someone to ground him. Her eyes were the sky, but it was clear that her bones had stone in them. An immovable object, standing in his office, or an irresistible force. He thought of the menhirs standing in the fields of Brittany, esoteric, known but not understood. She would make a solid place for herself even in the morass of his darkness.

He kept his distance. It had been so long since he had felt human. He had reassembled himself like Frankenstein's creature, a flimsy construction of sunflower seeds and intuition, clothed in insolence.

They stole glances at each other through the flickering light of the slide projector, measuring each other up. She pursed her lips and took his dimensions. He tested the tensile strength of her convictions and found they twanged in the same old tune. But she smiled.

\+ + + + 

Mulder on day one: broody charm and unruly hair, a study in studied indifference. His shoulders were broad, but his focus was narrow. His glasses gave him a youthful look, like a newly-minted professor. She imagined him reading her thesis, glasses sliding down his nose, the tips of his fingers pinching the fullest part of his lower lip. His eyes, reading her words, trying to discern the essence of her. She'd pored over his files the same way, as if she could riddle out the enigma of the man from the elegance of his prose. It suddenly seemed shockingly intimate, the two of them profiling each other. She was grateful for the buffer of his sarcasm. She knew where she stood when she was being rebuffed, although he was kinder than their compatriots, who dismissed her outright. 

She wondered how the Scully on the page compared to the Scully in front of him. He was only four years older than she was, despite the certain grace of his thinking. She had been so young when she'd written her thesis. Her desk had looked like his office, constellations of articles and quotations pinned up, bright minds to guide her. 

He watched her as if she mattered as she gazed at his impossible discoveries, breathing in the scent of paper and copier toner and the heated film of the slides. She felt the weight of his mind counterbalance hers. The Mulder-Scully equilibrium. Some new ideal, coming to sudden fruition in this lost space behind the copiers, among the detritus of newspaper clippings and scattered relics. It would be a pilgrimage, working in this place. Mulder had carved out a hermitage and filled it with scraps of his holy icons. 

For a moment she thought of catechism class, the feeling of being initiated into the mysteries of a wider world. The miracle of transubstantiation. The smell of incense and the crackling thin pages of her Bible. The bite of wine first in her nose, then sharp on her tongue. She looked at Mulder and she tasted wine. 

\+ + + + 

And that was the beginning of the world, something settling into place. On day two (G-d creating the heavens), he vexed and needled her, cool and pouty and smug and experienced. He painted new lines on a backroad and she marveled privately that he'd brought spray paint with him, despite the risk of explosive decompression. (Later, she knew it was just Mulder with his mind on higher things.) He acted as if she'd been his apprentice for years, assuring her she had the facts she needed. He kept her off-balance, prodding at her until she pushed back. She marked off her expertise with CAUTION tape, and to her surprise, he respected the line.

The rain fell and washed away her doubts. The facts stood bare and solemn as gravestones and she was washed clean, laughing, joyous, united in folly or in inspiration. They were part of the same thing, part of the sky, part of the earth, the boundaries between them blurring like watercolor.

And then, on her back, two red welts. In her terror, she bared herself to him, seeking his counsel, more than half-naked and trembling with something other than the Oregon chill. Mulder, she knew, would tell her the truth. He lived for the truth, no matter how difficult or arcane. If she had fallen prey already to the shadows that haunted his work, he would tell her, and if she died, he would mourn her, and she would be another sorrow he kept tucked away in a manila folder, another piece of the puzzle he would never stop worrying at. She would not be erased. She knew nothing in her panic but that Mulder would not lie to her, and that Mulder would not forget her.

It was mosquitoes. She flung herself into his arms and was immediately embarrassed, but he rubbed her shoulders briefly and gave her his bed as he bared himself in return, heart and soul if not skin and bone. She was too entranced by the hollow hurt in his voice to mind her own hastiness for long. Equilibrium was restored.

And the next day their work was ashes, and there were ashes too on the feet of the invalid, and the mystery was around them and beyond them. The justice they wrought was not sufficient. 

But it was not nothing.

She turned in her report to the men who reeked of cigarettes and pressed the button for the basement in the elevator, a descent that already felt familiar.


End file.
